Post-Game Quotes

Opening Statement “Great way for Lance and Moe to close out their senior year in this building. Obviously a great a way to close out this building. I thought the crowd gave us a great lift, especially early in the second half when we need a little energy. Very happy for Lance and Moe.”

On Jason Morris: “He’s been shooting the ball well. He means a lot to Iman, because he’s been our best three-point shooter all year. When he’s out there, he spaces the floor out for Iman. Iman has been on a roll the last three weeks, and it’s coincided with Jason’s minutes.

On shot selection: “We made our shots today, so it looks a lot different. I think out shot selection has improved, but I think the fact that Jason has been making a higher percentage, people have to account for him for all the time. It opens up the floor up.”

On ACC Tournament: “It’s the momentum, and we’re playing a Virginia Tech team that we split with. They beat us pretty bad up there. We played well against them here. We hope to have a good shooter back, Brian Oliver. We anticipate him back in the lineup. He won’t be 100 percent conditioning-wise, but if he can give us 10-15 minutes and be that threat in the open floor for Iman.”

On the final game in Alexander Memorial Coliseum: “Glad we won it. I’m just very appreciative of the people that came out. It’s nice to see them pay tribute the building, program, everything. It was nice to see everybody out there.”

Top memories: “I go back to the first year when we beat Wake Forest up to last year when we beat Duke. We’ve had some good moments, and obviously today was a good one too. “

MIAMI COACH FRANK HAITH

Opening Statement “Obviously our inability to handle the ball was the difference in the game. Georgia Tech pressures good, but I thought our guard play was not very good and particularly there in the second half. It’s as simple as that.”

How will the team react to the loss going into the ACC Tournament “We’ll see. We’ve been playing well and this is the first game we haven’t played well in a while. The first half was good, other than the last 38 seconds where we want to take the last shot, we shot it quick, and then we had a foul to give and didn’t foul. Our execution in that last minute, in the last 38 seconds of the first half was bad and it carried over to whole last 20 minutes of the second half. We have been playing well up until then. We had a great game against Maryland, Florida State we didn’t play well in the first half, but this game, it was just disappointing how we played.”

On Georgia Tech’s defense “I think we got the ball inside and I think that Reggie Johnson just turned the ball over. They had a lot of guys around him, but he had four turnovers. Other than that they were just aggressive and we didn’t handle the press very well. Our guard play, our point guard play wasn’t very good. You’ve got to control the game. We had the lead, we never got into the offense like we did in the first half and they turned the heat up. I thought our cuts in pressure were slow, we were not cutting hard and it made it very difficult to get the ball inbounds. We weren’t decisive when in our attack, we were too tentative.”

On the Reggie Johnson/Glen Rice altercation “I didn’t see the play materialize. I do know this about Reggie, Reggie is 6’10”, 300 pounds. If he loses his balance, he is going to fall. Reggie said that he was just going down and he didn’t mean to push him and I believe Reggie on that. But I didn’t see it, but he is one of those guys that if he starts to fall….we have say in practice, `Reggie, stay up, stay up.’ Because when he goes down, he goes down. Like I said I didn’t see the play, the official had a good view of it and I am anxious to see it.”

On the effect of Tech’s defense on Reggie Johnson “We wanted Reggie not to put the ball on the floor right away, because they were cutting right away on the dribble. We wanted him to play inside-out and when he did that, we were able to get good shots, particularly in the first half. I think he was just anxious and not being patient.”

On second half struggles in both games against Georgia Tech this year “Like I said, I think we stopped cutting and their pressure, we didn’t handle the pressure well in the second half.”